The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag Read online

  THE DANCE OF THE VOODOO HANDBAG

  ROBERT RANKIN

  The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag

  Originally published by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers

  Doubleday Edition published 1998

  Corgi Edition published 1998

  Kindle Edition published 2012 by Far Fetched Books

  Diddled about with and proof-read by the author, who apologises for any typos or grammatical errors that somehow slipped past him.

  He did his best, honest.

  Copyright Robert Rankin 1998

  The right of Robert Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  A Turnip for the Book

  ‘Now that’s a turnip for the book,’

  The farmer said to the pastry cook.

  ‘That’s a rare one, if I ever saw.’

  The pastry cook was indisposed,

  And both his eyes and ears were closed,

  And so he never heard the farmer when the farmer swore.

  ‘Here’s a strange thing that I see,’

  Said the cook of the paste-ter-ee.

  ‘Here’s a thing of which I’ll later boast.’

  The farmer, foaming at the jaw,

  Had bolted through the kitchen door,

  And was far out in the desert and was making for the coast.

  The farmer was always far out.

  1

  Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness.

  Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions.

  CLAUDE STEINER

  The doctor said that I was a paranoid schizophrenic. Well, he didn’t actually say it. But we knew he was thinking it.

  ‘Tell me about the butterfly,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Which particular butterfly would that be?’ I said.

  The doctor consulted his case notes. ‘The butterfly of chaos theory.’

  ‘Ah, that lad.’

  ‘That lad, yes. Would you care to tell me about it?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s just a theory. You know the kind of thing. A butterfly in Acapulco flaps its wings and England lose the European Cup.’

  The doctor nodded thoughtfully. ‘And you believe that, do you?’

  I shrugged again. ‘I can take it or leave it. I’m not bothered.’

  ‘And yet’ – more case note consulting – ‘I understand that you claimed to have such powers yourself.’

  ‘Me? Never!’

  ‘Really?’ The doctor raised an eyebrow and also a press cutting. ‘But I have here a review of your stage act, “Carlos the Chaos Cockroach”.’

  ‘That was just a comedy routine.’

  ‘Really? Yet in a taped interview with me earlier this month you claimed that by moving a biro in your top pocket, or putting paperclips on your ear, you could cause major events to occur’ – more case note consulting – ‘effect fluctuations on the stock market, topple governments, bring about world peace.’

  ‘I might have.’

  ‘You might have.’ The doctor adjusted his spectacles. Expensive designer spectacles they were, I’d had a pair like them once. Plain glass in mine, though, an image thing, I don’t want to dwell on it.

  ‘But didn’t you employ these powers in order to become the President of the United States for a week?’

  ‘That was an error of judgement on my part. I apologized to everyone. I stood down, didn’t I?’

  ‘But you did have the powers.’

  ‘Yes, all right, I did. But I don’t have them any more.’

  ‘The tablets are helping, are they?’

  ‘Tablets always help. That’s what tablets are for, isn’t it?’

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘Like God said.’

  ‘God?’

  ‘Like God said to Moses, “Keep taking the tablets.” ’

  ‘Was that supposed to be a joke?’

  ‘Very possibly. You’d have to ask God.’

  ‘I’m sorry I missed that stage act of yours. It must have been most amusing.’ The doctor’s tone lacked sincerity.

  ‘Hm,’ I said.

  The doctor consulted further case notes. He had an awful lot of case notes. A very great many case notes. A considerable wad of case notes. And they were all in a big fat folder with my name on the front. Well, one of my names, I use so many.

  Sighing just a little, he leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me all about the sprout,’ he said.

  ‘Sprout? What sprout?’

  ‘Harry, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘No, Barry. The sprout who lived inside your head.’

  ‘He didn’t live there. He’s not alive.’

  ‘He was a dead sprout.’

  ‘He was a theophany.’

  ‘And what is that, exactly?’

  ‘A manifestation of the deity to man, in a form that, though visible, is not necessarily material.’

  ‘So you could see him?’

  ‘No, I could hear him. He was my Holy Guardian Sprout.’

  ‘As in Holy Guardian Angel?’

  ‘That’s right. You see, there are more people in the world than there are angels in heaven, so God has to improvise. He shares out the produce of his garden. You’ve probably got a radish, or a turnip.’

  ‘Inside my head?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s like the voice of your conscience. Only you can hear it.’

  ‘And so Barry spoke to you and only you could hear him?’

  ‘That’s how it worked. It got me into a lot of trouble.’

  ‘And is Barry speaking to you now?’

  ‘No, you’re speaking to me now.’

  ‘Good. Very good. We are making progress.’

  ‘Does that mean that I can go home soon?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘How about letting me out of this straitjacket?’

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve answered your questions. I’ve told you about Barry. Barry was a delusion, I understand that now. I’m much better now. I just want to get out of here and get back to work.’

  ‘Ah yes, your work.’ The doctor took once more to the consultation of his case notes. ‘This would be in your capacity as a private detective, would it?’
r />   ‘It would, yes.’

  ‘And what exactly does a private detective do?’

  ‘Oh, come off it. Everyone knows what a private detective does.’

  ‘But what exactly did you do, when you were being one?’

  ‘Well...’ I had to think about this. It was a tricky question. ‘For the most part I just stood around in bars talking a load of old toot.’

  ‘And that’s what private detectives do?’

  ‘No, that’s what I did.’

  ‘And you called yourself’ – more case note consultation – ‘Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.’

  ‘After the new legendary detective in the P. P. Penrose novels. Some called him Laz, you know.’

  ‘Would you like me to call you Laz?’

  ‘I’d like you to call me a cab and let me get off about my business.’

  ‘Standing around in bars talking a load of old toot?’

  ‘No, solving my case.’

  ‘And this would be—’

  ‘The case of the voodoo handbag. Please leave your notes alone.’

  ‘Does the consultation of my notes upset you?’

  ‘It’s designed to, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then it’s working a treat.’

  ‘So, this case of yours, might we go through that again?’

  ‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve been through it with you dozens of times, and I’m fed up with telling you about it, and you must be fed up with listening to me telling you about it.’

  ‘I never get fed up,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m a doctor. We have tablets for that kind of thing.’

  ‘If I tell you about it again, will you take the straitjacket off?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Who’s this we?’

  ‘I’ll see.’

  I shrugged once more. A shrug was all I could manage.

  ‘The case was to do with the Law of Obviosity. And before you have to consult your notes again, that’s the Hugo Rune Law of Obviosity, which states, “Everything has to be somewhere and nothing can ever be anywhere other than where it is.”’

  ‘That sounds logical.’

  ‘It might sound logical, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.’

  ‘Would you care to explain?’

  ‘OK. Now I’m sure you’ll accept that there is a science to detective work. “The science of deduction”, as Holmes once put it. Private detective work is mostly to do with finding something that is missing. Something or somebody. So let’s say that you have to find something that’s supposedly gone missing. Where is the first place you would look?’

  The doctor shook his head.

  ‘You’d look in the most obvious place, wouldn’t you? But if it’s missing, then it won’t be there, will it?’

  ‘I would assume not.’

  ‘So then you look in the next most obvious place, and then the next and then the next and so on, until you find it. Because everything has to be somewhere and nothing can ever be anywhere other than where it is.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Right. But in order that you don’t involve yourself in an infinite amount of looking, the very best place to start looking would be in the least most obvious place.’

  ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘You’d think so. But if the least most obvious place is the most obvious place to start looking, then that makes it the most obvious place. So therefore it’s not the least most obvious place any more, because now it’s the most obvious place and there’s no point in looking in the most obvious place for something that’s gone missing, is there?’

  ‘Were you any good as a private detective?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘The very best. So, having eliminated the least most obvious place, because it’s the most obvious place to start looking, what you must ask yourself is, where is the least most obvious least most obvious place? And ten cent gets you a dollar back on the bottle, that’s exactly where it won’t be.’

  ‘So where will it be?’

  ‘It will be in the original most obvious place, because that is the least most obvious of all least most obvious places it could possibly be.’

  ‘But if it’s in the original most obvious place, then surely it’s not missing?’

  ‘Well, if it’s not missing, why come bothering me about it in the first place?’

  The doctor made a sort of coughing sound in his throat. ‘You were searching for a missing handbag, is that right?’

  ‘A missing voodoo handbag, yes.’

  ‘And did you find it?’

  ‘I found a handbag, but it wasn’t the one I was looking for.’

  ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘Not at all. It was the one I had been looking for on my previous case. And, as the least most obvious least most obvious way I was ever going to find that handbag was while looking for a different handbag, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I did find it. It was all so obvious, really.’

  ‘But you didn’t find the one you were looking for, the voodoo handbag?’

  ‘Well, how could I? You can’t find something if it doesn’t exist, can you?’

  ‘So the voodoo handbag doesn’t exist?’

  ‘The case of the voodoo handbag disproved Rune’s Law of Obviosity. I discovered that something could be somewhere other than where it is.’

  ‘So the voodoo handbag does exist?’

  ‘That’s a matter of definition. How can a thing exist if it isn’t where it is? Surely a thing has to be where it is in order to qualify for existence?’

  ‘So the voodoo handbag doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Well, if it doesn’t exist, why come bothering me about it?’

  The doctor made that coughing sound again. ‘Is there, or is there not, a voodoo handbag?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know. Because if there isn’t, then I’ve been looking in all the wrong places. But if there is, then I’ve been looking in all the right places, but I can’t find it. Frankly, I’m getting a little confused.’

  ‘You searched for it on the Internet, didn’t you? Why did you do that?’

  ‘Because you can never find anything you actually want on the Internet. So that was the least obvious place to look, which made it the most obvious place for it to be.’

  ‘But you didn’t find it there.’

  ‘No, I found something that I wasn’t looking for. Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously. So what did you find?’

  ‘You know what I found, or what I believe I found. And I’m not talking about the other handbag. I’m talking about the other thing. The big thing. The thing that’s got me banged up in here. The thing that no-one believes me about. That makes people think I’m mad — makes you think I’m mad.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re mad.’

  ‘Then let me out of this straitjacket.’

  ‘All in good time. Just tell me calmly and in your own way exactly what it is you believe you found.’

  ‘Okay. Calmly and in my own way. You know what virtual reality is, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. It’s holographic imagery, generated by computers and accessed by portable headsets and handsets. A synthetic reality modelled by mathematics, creating a hypothetical world commonly referred to as cyberspace.’

  ‘Very precise. But incorrect. There is nothing hypothetical about it. It’s a real place, and I’ve been there.’

  Again that coughing sound. ‘A real place, and you’ve been there?’

  ‘For ten long years I was trapped there and it’s not an unpopulated region. You see, we didn’t invent cyberspace, we only gained access to it. It was there already. It’s the same place we visit in our dreams, or when we do hallucinogenic drugs, or have a mystical experience. It’s not a physical place, but it’s real. It’s the weird space, the mundus magicus. But a company called Necrosoft is messing with it. They’re inflicting stuff on it. Messing with its natural
laws. Same old game, mankind mucking up the eco-system.’

  ‘And you worry about this?’

  ‘We’d all better worry about it. And we’d better do something about it, before it’s too late. Before they do something about us.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘They, them. The folk who live on the other side of the mirror. I told you, it’s not an unpopulated region. They don’t like what we’re doing, and if we don’t stop it they’ll stop us.’

  ‘And they told you this, did they? They chose you to pass on this message to mankind?’

  What?’

  ‘Or perhaps it was Barry, your Holy Guardian Sprout, perhaps he told you all about it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Calmly now. Tell me about these folk. The ones on the other side of the mirror. Who are they?’

  ‘They’re us. Or they’re a reflection of us, or we’re a reflection of them. Or a bit of both. But what does it matter, you don’t believe a word I’m saying. And the only way I’m ever going to get out of here is if I stop believing it too.’

  ‘And do you think you can stop believing it?’

  ‘Sure. I’ve stopped. Look at me. I’ve stopped and I’m all better now, so can I go home, please?’

  ‘Early days yet,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Early days? I’ve been here for months.’

  ‘These things take time.’

  ‘But we’re running out of time. If I can’t sort things out, then—’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then...er...nothing. I just have some things to sort out at home. Plants to water, aunties to visit. Normal sane things.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re being one hundred per cent truthful with me, are you?’

  ‘Look, can’t we be reasonable about this? Say I did believe everything I’ve just told you, which I don’t, of course. But say I did. Where’s the harm in it? The world is full of harmless loons with wacky ideas. You don’t bang them all up in mental institutions, the streets would be empty if you did that.’

  ‘You do have a point.’ The doctor gave his chin a bit of a stroke. ‘Eccentricity is not in itself a criminal offence.’